Spend your time HERE

Hi All,

Today I want to talk a little bit about conditioning and shaping on bars. Predominantly THIS is where you should be spending your time, if you spend the time on the conditioning and the shaping skills come. Not only do the skills come, but the upper level skills come SO MUCH FASTER because the techniques and shapes are already there, adding a half pirouette to something is much harder with a sway back and bent arms. So take the time to work on the shapes.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this first video (from Tom Stevens at Team Central Gymnastics), so many nice conditioning and shaping ideas. The pike-up in reverse grip? Fantastic. The shape at 3:57? Lovely.

Parallettes // Floor Bars // Handstand Trainer // Physio Ball

This second one is another nice one by Mary Lee Tracy. Once your kids can make good shapes consistently with elevated feet putting them on a physio ball is a good idea. It adds another dimension to it, and requires additional muscles that will improve your gymnasts core strength.

Train hard!

Photo credit: http://beaminggymnasts.blogspot.com/

Parallettes // Floor Bars // Handstand Trainer // Physio Ball

4 Comments

  1. Kat says:

    I tried out a couple of the drills from the first video (the hollow with the spotting block @ 2:30; and the candlestick @ 8:00), along with a couple others you’ve posted (I can’t find them anymore!) this week with my level 5s and I such a great improvement on the entire high-bar part of the routine. Your emphasis on working on shaping on bars is definitely permeating into my coaching!

    • Zari Goldmann says:

      I’m so happy that you’re seeing a difference with your gymnasts. That’s definitely my goal. To get people as much good information as I can so they can make their gymnasts better. Do you remember what drills they were? Maybe I can find them for you.

      • Kat says:

        I’ve been using a bunch with the bands – standing up, with feet elevated in a hollow – pretty much every variation I’ve seen you post, lol. And I also used the handstand against the barrel that you posted about more recently – I too got some great shapes out of that! As a new coach I’m really trying to build up my repertoire of drills, and there aren’t enough technique-focused coaching blogs out there that post regularly.

  2. Can you tell me what you used to set up the drill for tapping strength and shape? It looks like a pulley set up but I can’t tell from the video. Can you send me a diagram? I tried to do the drill with some heavy duty elastic bands but it was less than ideal. Thank you!

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